DECLARATIOPONTIFICALIS

Below is the text of the resignation statement delivered by Pope Benedict XVI on 11 February 2013 as it was originally posted on the Vatican's website with one typo (`hora 29' for `hora 20' ) corrected but two grammatical errors, which have now been corrected on the official web page, left unchanged and highlighted in red. The first of these mistakes was presumably by the Vatican employee who typed the text into a computer after the Pope had read it out. The second was made by the Pope himself as can be heard on the recording of him speaking to the cardinals (click on the strip below the video, not on the video itself). The reader who wants to test his or her own grammatical skills can attempt to correct the endings of the two words before either going to the Vatican site or looking at an explanation of the errors.

A pdf file with translations of the speech into English and other major European languages can be downloaded from the button at the bottom of this page. The Italian journalist who, alone amongst her colleagues, understood the Latin as it was read out and was thus the first to break the story, gave her account of what happened to the BBC, and another BBC report (`Pope resignation: who speaks Latin these days?') looks at the communicative use of the language inside and outside the Church.